


The Legend of Sgt. Pepper

by TeddieJean



Series: Prompted One-shot Collection [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Crack, And cashmere scarf, But I'm really kind of into it, Gen, He and his horrendously wonderful plaid pants, Humor, Random-ass trio grouping, Scabior is my little love, This is probably the strangest thing I've ever written, Underdogs, Vague Rescuers crossover, crackfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 20:43:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7729051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeddieJean/pseuds/TeddieJean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An owl brings a cry for help to the secret Wizard's Aid Society; in pursuit of the source of all magic rumored to be held in the Department of Mysteries, Vernon and Petunia Dursley have kidnapped Pansy Parkinson. Cue the rowdy and enigmatic trio of deadbeat hopefuls Scabior, the bass player of the Weird Sisters, and Dennis Creevey coming prancing to the rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Legend of Sgt. Pepper

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was: "The Rescuers," as in the old Disney movie. I did . . . something. Let me know what you think of this one because I have seriously no idea.

"Donny, Jasper!" Dennis skids in with his Muggle jeans rolled above his trainer tops, grey eyes alight with enthusiasm, brandishing an envelope. _"Thundercats are go!"_ In the shabby storeroom they've rented as an office, features lit only by a feeble _Lumos_ — for lack of being registered with the Magical Lighting Association — his excitement is wrenchingly out of place.

"The 'ell are you on about? I thought I told you not to call me that," Scabior drawls, tipped back in his chair. He twiddles a nail file between his long, grimy fingers.

"We vowed to allow no heightened energy before coffee," Donaghan adds from the floor by the filing cabinet. "The universe has provided no coffee."

"Our heating spells are shite, and the Muggle machine's broken," Dennis replies carelessly, wending his way between stacks of furniture. Approaching the stained desk, he continues to flail his discovery wildly. "Look here! A letter; a _real owl post letter!_ It's got our name on it and everything!" One-handed, brow knitted in boredom, Scabior snatches the parchment from the air, and unfolding it, reads its contents aloud.

 _"The Wizard's Rescue Aid Society, Bristol — to whom it may concern: your services are required in retrieving Pansy Parkinson, victim of a Muggle kidnapping, missing August ninth. More details upon engagement. Reply posthaste_ — hey, how about that?" he hoots; Dennis flinches but doesn't drop his grin as the older wizard stands so energetically that his chair clatters to the floor. "Blimey, looky here — it's even got a little ribbon to tie it up!"

"I'm a little worried about the 'more details upon engagement' part," Dennis pipes up, though his eyes remain eager. "It sounds a little dodgy, but I screened the parchment for curses, and it's not carrying anything nasty — "

"Who cares? It doesn't matter if it's dodgy! Somebody needs our help, and it's the Society's decree that we will answer any call _no matter the risk."_ Dennis's eyes are bright.

"So we'll do it?" he breathes, and with his almost manically enthusiastic expression he looks like a child on his first trip to Honeydukes.

"'Course we'll do it!" Scabior crows. With a flourish, he sends the letter sailing towards the door. "Ready your fanny packs, gents; we're going on a rescue mission."

"Righteous," Donaghan agrees from the floor. "But if our auras are going to pull through this, I'm taking some coffee from the diner across the way. I hope this Parkinson broad knows her heating spells from her herbal remedies."

* * *

Despite all of their bravado exhibited while arranging their fanny packs, the three of them congregate rather nervously on the townhouse steps, gnawing their Droobles long after the flavor has dissipated. Every few seconds, Scabior hitches up his plaid trousers. Even Dennis's scrawny face is pinched with uncertainty; for all their bluster, after all, they're three deadbeat young men with mediocre magic who share a rented studio space and eat off paper plates. They don't exactly have a lot to lose. 

When the door opens on a fair, thin-faced man, Scabior quells his urge to diffuse any nervous tension with a tasteless joke. Even before speaking, this wizard gives the distinct impression of being well-bred, which only serves to make Scabior more nervous. Cultured people make him uncomfortable.

The young woman who appears in the doorway a moment later only enhances his discomfort.

"Merlin's — Draco, I told you to do a _background check_ before sending off a notice."

"And I told _you_ that we wanted to keep a low profile. Do you have any concept of the field day Skeeter would have if she found out a pair of Muggles kidnapped a pureblood?"

"Pansy is our friend; we can't put her life at risk! Besides, not all Muggles are bad."

"Don't bring blood purity into this, 'Mione; I've met your parents," the man, Draco, replies patiently before turning his attention fully to the trio at his doorstep. "You're the people I wrote to? The Ladies Aid Society?"

"That's from the American Reconstruction period, darling," his wife corrects gently. "That's the last time you try to tell me you haven't gotten into my bedtime reading books." She unfastens her eyes from her husband and lets them rove over the trio. "You're the Wizard's Rescue Aid, I presume?" Scabior shifts awkwardly, suddenly feeling the full weight of his ponytail in the August heat. For some reason, he's a lot less excited about this mission than he was twenty minutes ago.

"Well," is all he comes up with after a moment of mental flailing during which he drudges up every intellectual moment in his memory. Luckily, Dennis has had a moment to pull himself together.

"Dennis Creevey, Miss," he greets politely, extending a sweaty hand. The lady grips it for a moment, then lets it slip wetly from her grasp. "Treasurer of the Society. How may we be of service?" The woman raises an eyebrow.

"That's precisely what we'd like to discuss."

* * *

"What did you _tell_ them, Creevey? I took _two minutes_ to use the loo and you had them all over you like that ghastly air freshening charm on Tremlett's shirts."

"I told them that we were a long-established firm with impeccable public service credentials and a spotless record," Dennis proclaims proudly. Scabior chokes on his Firewhiskey. "What? Donny has a wonderful recommendation from that barkeeper down Spinner's End."

"You didn't happen to mention that we don't _have_ a record, I suppose," Scabior retorts waspishly, taking another swig. With a heat-reddened hand, he adjusts the cashmere scarf the Lady Malfoy gave him to disguise the un-vanishable stain on his shirt.  So far, this day isn't turning out to be the glorious adventure he originally envisioned, and he's swiftly losing patience. They were up early extracting rats from between the couch cushions, and he's ready to be home with his day-old Muggle noodles. Maybe he's too old to be starting something like this.

"Don't be ridiculous," Dennis huffs. His attention is partially consumed by a scrap of parchment. "Anyway, you're one to talk, Jasper — drinking on the job."

 _"Don't_ call me that; and it's necessary evil," Scabior grumbles, but otherwise falls silent. It takes Dennis a moment to get his bearings; tucking the paper away, he gestures to the phone booth in front of them.

"This is it," he declares. "Here's the plan: Malfoy said the Muggles are after something in the Department of Mysteries, so we make like we're headed for the Employment Office, and if anyone spots us where we shouldn't be, we're looking for the loo." Scabior gawks.

"That's _it?"_ Dennis shrugs.

"Short and sweet."

"Simplicity is harmonious," Donaghan supplies from behind them. Scabior grits his teeth. Here he was thinking they all took this job seriously . . . Dennis is an overambitious child, and Donaghan, while decent at herbal concoctions, is almost entirely useless. It's a little frightening that _he_ seems to be the most adult of the group.

"What about when we get down there?" he demands. "What about the girl? Do we capture the Muggles?"

"No capturing," Dennis denies soberly. "We detain them, get the girl out, inform Malfoy, end of story."

"Do we even know what they're after?" he wants to know. He seems to have missed a lot when he was in the Malfoys' ridiculously opulent loo. Having shepherded the three of them into the phone booth, Dennis is dialing a number off his parchment scrap.

"The source of all magic itself," is his casual reply. Scabior has consumed enough Firewhiskey by now that the statement isn't as surprising as it should be. Who knows? The liquor tells him that perhaps this could be the adventure he's looking for. "They're said to be carrying guns — Muggle weaponry," Dennis elaborates when Scabior only blinks. "Nasty business. We aren't skilled enough to magically deflect that sort of mess."

"How do you suggest we handle them, then?" Scabior asks, keeping his tone conversational.

"Brute force," is Dennis's easy reply.

"Love is all you need," reminds Donaghan solemnly.

* * *

The plan doesn't work.

Perhaps that's not fair; it works to a point — the point at which Donaghan, having misheard their earlier conversation, attempts to convince a burly Auror that the three of them are outside the courtrooms in pursuit of the Louvre instead of the loo. It's the point at which, after a minute of steadily increasing horror at their own fumbling explanations, the three of them abandon all pretense and flee like criminals in different directions down the labyrinth of corridors on Level Twelve. _Merlin,_ the place is unnavigable.

In all honesty, though, Scabior is proud of them; there is a complete absence of unmanly shrieking, and somehow, they all miraculously manage to wind up in a small circular room lined with spinning doors. In good humor after the thrill of the chase, he decides to ignore their utter stupidity in not having researched a single thing about the Department of Mysteries before hurling themselves into its depths. In fact, he rather relishes it; ignorance leaves room for adventure, and he's starting to get the feeling that there's going to be more of one of those than he anticipated.

Utter ignorance is how they find themselves skidding randomly through a door into the top of what looks like a massive Quidditch stadium — the bottom of which inexplicably contains an empty archway — and looking down, quite by accident, upon the object of their mission.

Several feet from the archway, a pug-faced young woman is facing off with an enormous man, an even larger boy, and a rather horsey woman with an unnaturally long neck. Parkinson is evidently wandless, though holding her own with what appears to be a combination of snotty retorts and highly repulsed glares. Scabior immediately susses her out as a woman with whom he would normally be unwilling to spar, but the Muggle man is indeed wielding some sort of metal weapon, and it's also clear by Parkinson's frequent instinctive movements towards her pocket that she's helpless in the absence of her wand.

Perhaps, if he weren't so out of breath, Scabior would think this situation through; there are, after all, a lot of viable options to pursue. He likes to think he's dedicated in taking a split-second to consider each of them. Images of elaborate, half-formed plans flash through his mind — a complex diversion, an ambush, or perhaps a well-choreographed attack — but really, it's too late. The noodles have packed some pounds on him; he's tired, the girl is vaguely pretty despite her squashed nose, and Merlin curse it, he wants an _adventure._

Besides, they entered the chamber loudly and obviously, and have drawn the Muggles' attention. They might as well make an impression while they're holding the floor, so Scabior does the perfectly logical thing: he hollers as loudly as he can, hurls himself down into the chamber, and fires off a volley of every housekeeping spell he knows.

_It's a beginning, at least._

As he sprints down the stone steps to the dais, he can sense Dennis and Donaghan standing above, open-mouthed. For an instant, he wonders if Dennis has it in him to throw caution to the wind and enjoy the chaos of the moment, but a wild whoop a moment later informs him that there he has no reason to doubt the boy's sense of adventure. This kid isn't half bad.

Glorying in the delight of racing towards an opponent with his companion behind him, Scabior takes a flying leap onto the dais and sends the massive boy skittering off the opposite edge in surprise. The Muggle woman, predictably, seizes Parkinson as a hostage and ducks behind the archway, leaving the man to tighten his grip on the gun and adjust his stance. Clearly, he is expecting Scabior to stop before he reaches them, to perhaps instigate a face-off.

Scabior has no such intentions.

He plows into the Muggle just as Dennis reaches the platform. Dennis, whose energy level has risen to resemble that of a puppy, is quick to fling himself onto the struggling pair, who grunt at the addition of weight. At the sight of her husband grappling with the two wizards, the Muggle woman lets out a piercing shriek and wastes no time in discarding Parkinson and joining the swiftly growing pig pile. Within seconds, the four have become a whirl of inhuman sounds, flailing limbs, and exceedingly sharp elbows, and are tangled so completely that there seems to be no escape.

The Muggle boy, meanwhile, is creeping towards the unsuspecting Parkinson. Somehow, in the confusion, he has managed to acquire his father's gun, which was knocked away during the scuffle. At a level of stealth quite impressive for his size, he waits until he is directly behind the girl before seizing her like a lifeline and dragging her towards the arch. From what Scabior is able to distinguish above the roars and yelps of the wrestling match, the boy believes that that which he seeks lies, somehow, within the archway. It doesn't take a lot of concentration to understand that Parkinson, being a pureblood and thereby somehow more knowledgeable, is expected to retrieve it.

Scabior doesn't believe in funny feelings, but he sure as Circe has a nasty sense about that archway. The feeling is definitively disturbing in a way that prompts him to pay attention. He's not about to let that whale of a Muggle shove the object of his rescue mission into what he's fairly certain is something akin to the metaphysical representation of the state of his sock drawer, but unfortunately there's an ankle in his mouth and a kneecap poking his ribs, and he's pretty sure that he accidentally has Dennis in a headlock with his feet. In short, there's very little that he can do except for yell with all his might and hope that someone doesn't get ahold of his scarf. Tears welling in his eyes from the stench of filthy feet, he watches as the Muggle drags Parkinson closer and closer to the vacant arch — they're almost there now — her fingertips are nearly grazing the stone, and he swears he sees a faint ripple in the air . . .

The next thing he knows, a Muggle song is blasting at full volume around the entire chamber, and there's heart-shaped confetti all over creation.

_What?_

Scabior wrenches his head free from the knot of limbs to see Donaghan standing at the top of the stairs holding a Muggle boom box above his head and spewing a fountain of paper hearts from his wand-tip, triumph alight in his face. Scabior can't help it; he laughs. Almost immediately, however, he recalls what's happening and is grateful that, rather than take advantage of his momentary lapse of attention, the Muggles have frozen in complete astonishment.

Scabior doesn't hesitate.

A full-body jerk has him free of the pile, and he follows it with a variation of the _Incarcerous_ he used this morning on the rats. The two adult Muggles are instantly ensnared in a nylon cord, and Scabior pretends as hard as he can not to see that it automatically matches the current decor and comes out bright pink. Valiantly ignoring it, he shoots a stunning spell at the boy, kicks the gun away, grabs Parkinson by the collar, and _books_ it.

At the top of the chamber, Dennis catches up enough to sprint out the door on their heels, whooping with glee. Parkinson is bellowing obscenities for no apparent reason other than emphasis, of which Scabior cannot help but be admiring, and Donaghan follows gaily behind, _Love Is All You Need_ still blasting, trailing confetti as he goes.

* * *

Their arrest upon reaching the Atrium is inevitable, of course. Scabior finds, however, that it hardly matters. Malfoy will bail them out tonight as part of their mission contract, so he's free to enjoy the as-yet-unfamiliar experience of going to jail without having to worry about making it a permanent residence. In addition, he's cellmates with Parkinson, who expresses nothing less than pure amusement at the state of her rescue squad. She laughs along with them and expresses her gratitude, and even promises to fit them with their very own company robes. He shoots down her teasing offer to make a heart their logo. He only hopes she's joking.

All in all, he decides, it hasn't been a bad day by any means. He got his adventure, his business returned, successful, from its very first job, and he has decided not to underestimate Donaghan ever again. He also thinks that Parkinson looks rather endearing with confetti hearts in her hair, but something tells him not to let her know, and that the glances she's shooting him over the edge of her prison cot mean that she's known how it looks for a lot longer than he. He grins and sends her a smirk in return. If only she doesn't mind rats, he realizes, and if her heating spells are up to snuff, he might have gotten even more out of this day than their first official business summons indicated.

Maybe he isn't too old to get started in this business, after all. In fact, Scabior realizes, never mind run-down offices or day-old Muggle noodles; it turns out that the Wizard's Rescue Aid Society happens to be exactly his style. _Jasper M. Scabior — Wizard's Rescue Aid._

He likes the sound of that.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who (like me) is persnickety enough to notice, the boom box works in the Ministry because while the Department of Mysteries is filled with magic, it's not the same kind of bangs-and-smells magic as there is at Hogwarts; it's more fundamental, and so I decided that (for my purposes) it wouldn't interfere with the Muggle technology on the same level.


End file.
